This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Dear "The Good Wife,"

Really? That was your finale? That grim misanthropic epically unsatisfying excuse of an episode that aired on Sunday night? I understand that it might have felt interesting — even brave — on some level to all of you (the show's creators and cast) to deliberately give loving, loyal fans an artistic middle finger. BUT COME ON. You dissed us. And you dissed yourself while you were at it.

Let me explain.

First, you owed people like me — who've been with you from the beginning — a LITTLE something to feel happy about as the final credits rolled.

OK. Before I go on, I want you to understand how much I loved you — or at least the first five years of you. Tuning in week after week was such a pleasure. I'd sit in front of our TV with my laptop, get on Facebook (like old people in America everywhere) and talk about what was happening in a given episode with other fans, which included the Trib's own Scott D. Pierce. See what I mean? We cared about your characters. Why? Because with your stellar writing and performances Sunday after Sunday, you made us care.

Now back to the part where you dissed us. So. Newsflash, Walter Cronkite. I'm a big girl who's logged a lot of miles in this life, OK? I'm super aware at this stage of the Living Game that things don't always turn out the way we want them to. Relationships fall apart. Illness strikes. Money disappears. Reputations suffer. I get it. Oh, Honey, I SO GET IT. And because I get it, I really don't expect the fiction I consume — novels, movies, TV series — to end 100 percent happily. In fact, I'm annoyed if it does. I like me some honest melancholy as a plot winds down. I savor the notion in an ending that for something gained, there's always something lost in the process.

But here's the thing, in real life, no matter how bad things get, there's always that good thing, that worthwhile thing that makes you stop and say, "Well, at least there's this." So, "TGW," if you were striving for realism with that bleak ending, you missed the boat. As Alicia stood completely and utterly alone in that desolate hallway, you struck a note as false as if Alicia had awakened from a bad dream and discovered that Will (along with "Dallas' " Bobby Ewing) was still alive.

So yes. You dissed your fans. How, then, did you also dis yourself? For my money, you were the smartest thing on network TV as you tracked the odyssey of a disgraced politician's wife discovering herself personally and professionally. You let things play out in real time — or at least what passes for real time in TV World — as Alicia Florrick struggled to deal with family, friends and co-workers against the backdrop of weekly stories that took on all kinds of issues from gun control to race relations to personal faith to the NSA spying on its own citizens. And you did all of that with such style and wit (thanks to a series of brilliant cameos over the years), never dumbing issues down for your audience.

But with this finale you made us want to say "good riddance" to the characters we've invested seven years of our TV lives in — especially Alicia, who was complex, yes. Who was flawed, yes. Who was often self-deluded, yes. But for whom we rooted, nonetheless, hoping that she would find some measure of happiness. Instead, by episode's end, — SPOILER ALERT HERE — we felt like going Diane on her and slapping her across the face.

Was that really the takeaway you were aiming for?

After all these years?

Sincerely (and sincerely disappointed),

Ann Cannon

P.S. I know. It's only a show.

Ann Cannon can be reached at acannon@sltrib.com.